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What I Did on my Spring Vacation -- Day 5, Thursday, and Day 6, Friday

Note:  Sorry I didn't update this sooner.  Boring Personal Shit intervened.

Thursday was our free day.  We didn't really have a plan for what to do, we weren't doing anything at Disney, and we weren't leaving until Friday morning.  So Jean and I went hunting for breakfast while Ryan snoozed.  Jean found a place on Yelp that was nearby and got reasonably good reviews, so we set off and found it relatively easily.

I'll just say, if that's a 4-star breakfast place, then Southern California has really low standards for breakfast.

We then went wandering, first to The Pleasure Chest, where apparently Ryan once worked.  While there, I made a complete and utter ass of myself to Sex Nerd Sandra, who is a podcaster and my hero and I felt awful about slobbering all over her (virtually; I managed to avoid bodily fluids in reality).

From there, we went to In-N-Out again for lunch, and I once again ate more than I really should have, ordering off-menu and enjoying my final taste of heaven in burger form for the trip.  We toured around LA for a while, Ryan playing tour guide and telling us about the experience of living in LA when he was younger.  It made me want to hug him, and run very very fast in the Northern direction.

For dinner, we stopped at a grocery store for liquor, hit up a truly fabulous Mexican restaurant, and then retired to the room to booze it up, play with our lightsabers, and get to sleep early for our flight the next day.

A note on Mexican food:  I had not realized just how much I missed good Mexican, which you really can't get in Portland, until we ate at this little hole-in-the-wall place.  Once again, thanks to Yelp and customer reviews, we ate somewhere I wouldn't normally look twice at, and had a fabulous meal for a really reasonable amount.

We woke up early on Friday, and Jean and I went back to the Mexican place to get breakfast while Ryan ate his leftovers.  Then we packed up our stuff, made sure the room was empty of our things, checked out, and Ryan took us to the airport.  At LGB, it turns out there is an inside to the place, which was the TSA area and the check-in gates.  Getting into the airport was as easy as getting out of it, and we said goodbye to Ryan and boarded our plane back to PDX, me hopped up on muscle-relaxants to keep my back from seizing up in the airplane seats.  Two hours later, we were on the ground and a 20 minute train ride had us home and relaxing in time for an afternoon nap.

All together, it was a magnificent trip, and I'd love to do it again sometime, perhaps even next year.  Our fellow travelers were wonderful, and I found out that traveling with Jean makes me calm, a more effective mood-stabilizer than Xanax or Valium.

A note on drugs:  don't do them, kids!  (totally do them, kids).

So that's my vacation!

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